2005 NRHEG Graduate shares story, authors book
Jason Lennox speaks to REACH classes at NRHEG
By DEB BENTLY
Staff Writer
“I challenge you to be a decent human being.”
Jason Lennox, a 2005 NRHEG graduate, was invited to speak to about 90 students in the three sections of sophomore health and in a class titled “Relationships, Education, Accountability, Character, and Hard Work,” most commonly referred to as REACH.
Lennox shared the story of his personal struggles with relationships and drug addiction, admitting that, already at the age of 10 he had held a knife to his own chest, wondering how much it would hurt and how long it would take to die.
Lennox has recently published a book, “A Perfect Tragedy: Finding Purpose in Pain, Loss, and addiction.” The text began as a series of blogs published online, and is now also in print. Lennox has been a consistent speaker at NRHEG, telling about his experiences and encouraging students both to stay away from harmful substances themselves and to be compassionate toward others.
“Addiction often comes about because of pain,” he said. “If you know someone who’s headed down that path, you could make the difference between whether they continue in that direction or turn around.
“"We make assumptions about what people are thinking and feeling, but the only way to know is to talk with them. To be there for them."
Lennox told of his childhood. The offspring of a relationship that was badly damaged by alcoholism and drug addiction, he and an older brother began elementary school in Owatonna. His mother married a new partner and had two children by her new husband.
“I was a straight A student in those lower grades,” he said. “My life at home was miserable. I never knew what I would be in trouble for. I couldn't experience love or acceptance.” Mentioning that young children have their own, almost always inaccurate, perception of reality, Lennox told the high-schoolers his childhood self was ashamed of his life and himself, thinking he was to blame–at least partly because he absorbed the struggles between his mother and stepfather.
“I couldn’t open up and share with another human being what was going on inside my head,” Lennox said. “What I could control was my life in the classroom. Getting good grades was my way of proving I wasn’t worthless.”
Still, he said, that was not enough to make him feel worthwhile. “I was constantly scanning,” he said. “I would look at other people and I would decide their lives were better than mine.
“I would tell myself I could be happy if I only had what they had–sports, sleepovers–I was looking outward my entire childhood. There was nowhere I could just retreat into myself and be a little boy. There was nowhere I felt I was accepted.”
By age 12, though, he had found a group that would let him in. “They were a bit older than I was, and they were doing things they probably shouldn’t, but they were willing to accept me.”
Among the “probably shouldn’t”s were drugs and alcohol. Lennox remembers he experimented with substances at the encouragement of this group. “The first time I tried alcohol, the first time I used pot, I was violently sick.” Though he admits it was completely illogical, he continued to use for the sake of fitting in.
“I was no longer scanning,” he described. “My anxiety, my depression started to fall away; I no longer felt worthless.” His grades, however, dropped precipitously, and he began to be marked as a troublemaker.
When Lennox was in seventh grade, his mother and stepfather divorced. His mother decided to move to New Richland, at least partly to get Lennox and his brother away from the negative influences in their lives.
“But now I was an outsider, I had a low self image, and I was the new kid,” Lennox observed.
Another hole in his life, he said, was the absence of his biological father, who had remained in Massachusetts where Lennox and his brother had been born.
At one point, his mother sent him and his brother to visit their father.
When the two of them arrived, their aunts had not heard from their father in some time–but they knew where to look. “He would be in one detox center or another. They called around the state and they found him, and we were able to go for a visit.”
Lennox described his father as “drooling, and crusted over all over his face. It was about as disturbing a picture as you would ever expect to see.”
Despite seeing the effects of addiction Lennox continued down the same path. His attendance at school was sporadic and “I failed every class but gym.” After numerous opportunities to straighten up, including being allowed to live rent-free in a house owned by his mother, he continued to “blow every opportunity.”
One positive element was his participation in football. An uncle offered to pay some of the costs so that Lennox could begin playing during his freshman year. “I was pretty good,” he says. “I was finally finding a place in the popular crowd.”
The four years of his career were peppered with penalties. After getting a DUI, rules required that he sit out a significant part of his sophomore season. Failing grades also affected his playing time.
“By my junior year, I was one of those people I always used to be jealous of.” But then, he says, he became greedy. He treated those close to him rudely; “I pushed them away,” he said.
“Unbelievably, even though I had once been someone who was looked down on, who was called names, I now began to do that to others.” The backlash from those choices put him back where he had once been–lonely, and looking for anyone willing to accept him.
“I came back for my senior year of football,” he remembers. “I wanted to do one season right–and we had a great record–maybe one of the best ever here at NRHEG.”
But when the football season ended he drew away from school almost completely. Having destroyed his mother’s trust, he had nowhere to live.
“I was homeless,” he said. “I would wander around town begging for drugs from people who might give them to me and looking for loose change to buy something to eat.” He describes eating crumbled-up dry ramen noodles as a meal.
“I slept just about anywhere you can imagine,” he said. “On park benches, in the back seats of people’s cars.”
Although NRHEG issued him a diploma, Lennox admits he may not have deserved it. By the age of 21, he told students, “I knew my destiny was to die from this thing.”
A grave regret Lennox describes is his reaction to an “intervention” his family–and especially his grandmother Diane Jewison–tried to put together for him. Tricked into “stopping by” his grandmother’s house, he found those close to him gathered with the intent of convincing him to change his lifestyle.
“It didn’t work,” he said. “I was angry. I swore at them. I left before they got a chance to say anything.”
Not much later, Lennox found himself in jail. He remembers looking around the cell looking for anything he could use to kill himself.
The court system offered Lennox a chance. If he attended treatment and stayed clean, he could avoid hard time.
One week after entering the treatment program, he received the news that his grandmother had died. “It’s one of the great regrets of my life,” he said. “She had been trying to help me. She was showing her love, and all I showed her was anger and spite. And now I would never have the chance to set that straight.”
Lennox told students that he did not believe the treatment program could help him–that he had become a hopeless case. However, he had no choice but to stay.
“The only reason I’m here and alive,” he said, “is because I sat in a room where people shared their stories.
“I could tell by their conviction, by the way they spoke, that those stories were true. These people had been where I was, they had lived lives similar to mine, and they had come out the other side.
“That’s when I believed maybe I could escape.”
Now 37, Lennox has been in recovery for 13 years.
“I could feel myself becoming that person I always thought I could be,” he remembers of his time in treatment. Now an administrator, consultant, and business owner, Lennox operates two recovery homes and works at many levels in the behavioral healthcare industry.
Despite his own positive outcome, Lennox cautioned students, “It’s not easy, and it’s not typical. Last year, 250,000 people died from addiction-related causes. Maybe 10 out of every 100 accept treatment, and 1 of those 10 go on to build positive futures.”